


Ray of Light

by vogue91



Category: Original Work
Genre: Escape, F/M, Introspection, Pictures, Self-Discovery, Spain, Travel, Welsh Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 10:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16638287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: He was expecting cold.He was, because the sky was speaking of cold.It spoke of snowy winters spent in Wales, in his Brecon, with a little over seven thousands souls, all of them turned off by that freezing February which promised to be identical to those he had seen in the twenty-three previous years.Now, instead, he felt an unnatural warmth.Sevilla.





	Ray of Light

 

He was expecting cold.

He was, because the sky was speaking of cold.

It spoke of snowy winters spent in Wales, in his Brecon, with a little over seven thousands souls, all of them turned off by that freezing February which promised to be identical to those he had seen in the twenty-three previous years.

Now, instead, he felt an unnatural warmth.

 _Sevilla_.

He had left taken by an unstoppable instinct, leading him like a robot to Cardiff’s airport, take that plane which had head more and more south before landing.

Only when he had stepped on Spanish soil, he had woken up.

_What was he doing there?_

In his life, he had never left his nation. But now, something had clicked in him.

It had been during yet another lecture at the university, when he had seen all the same faces, heard his friends’ voices, always with the same tone, which he had felt as if he was about to suffocate.

At first, he had blamed his condition to stress. Then it hadn't gone away nor it had diminished, and he had lost control over himself.

And he had left, he had run away cowardly from that greyness. A short phone call to his parents without giving them time to reply, and he had found himself there, lost, with a too little suitcase and a too big desire to consume his life.

Slowly, he had started smiling.

He couldn’t really explain the reason behind his choice. The south was full of peaceful cities, drowned in sun, closer to his standards. But his choice had fallen on that place, famous, alive, the sound of a million hearts beating echoing in the air.

And, he had to admit it to himself, in the middle of those hearts there was one he had come here to meet, against all odds.

Breathing had a whole different meaning right now.

 

~

 

He was in Plaza de España, and it almost felt as if he had already seen that place.

His mind ran to a couple years before, and he closed his eyes.

He saw a face, heard a voice, felt the texture of smooth and unnatural cold skin under his fingers.

Aleta Rubio.

When he had called her, the night before, he had expected the girl to have forgotten about him, to hang up on him, telling him she was busy.

Instead she had asked him to meet there, in that magical place, capable of giving him memories of moments he had never lived.

 

_“And what’s this?” he asked to the girl. They were sitting under a secular tree, a sequoia, he though._

_The girl was showing him pictures of her city, Sevilla, her eyes oddly watery._

_Liam was surprised. Aleta was in Brecon for her studies, she was going to leave in a few months tops. And him, provincial Welshman, couldn’t really understand all that nostalgia for her hometown._

_Until, unless, he got to see that picture._

_“It’s Plaza de España.” she told him, finally smiling. “It’s beautiful, isn't it?” she went own with that calm voice, heavily marked by an accent Liam found beautiful._

_He nodded and kept staring at the picture, as if there was some sort of secret hidden in it._

And yet, now that he had it in front of his eyes, he realized there was no secret in that square.

The immensity of the central open space couldn’t conceal them, nor it could hide between the pillars skirting it, on the complex drawings heritage of the Arabian domain.

It was the perfect place, and its only mystery laid in its beauty, untouched by the time passing by.

He was leaning against one of the central pillars, sitting on the stairs leading to the actual square.

He stared bewildered at the feeble December sun, making the tiles shine of a red speaking of like, a life unknown to him.

He saw her from afar, walking that apparently endless space as if she was never to get closer.

With his mind, he went back to last night phone call.

He was standing in a phone booth in front of his hotel, he looked around as if he wanted to hide what he was doing, ashamed of himself as he had never happened to feel through his whole existence.

 

_“Aleta?”_

“Sì, hola?” _the voice was hesitating, but weirdly cheerful._

_“It’s Liam. Liam Thomas.” he had murmured, suddenly losing any form of courage which had forced him to call._

“Liam! Hi, it’s so good to hear you!” _she had replied, her voice more excited._

_“I'm in Sevilla.” he had started to feel a certain anxiety, wondering what had brought him to that city, to call her, to hope so hard that she wasn’t going to think he was crazy for having taken a plane to a place where he had no business._

“De verdad? I can't believe it! The Welshman so attached to his homeland has crossed the border?” _she had mocked him. Receiving no answer from him, she had gone on. “_ Want to meet tomorrow? I’ve got a few hours, I have no classes in the morning.” _she had suggested, making him sigh in relief._

_“That’s be perfect. Where are we going to meet?”_

“Do you remember that picture I showed you? Plaza de España?”

_Liam had stupidly nodded, before realizing she couldn’t see him through the phone._

_“Yes, I remember. Is nine okay?”_

It was five past nine.

Those five minutes had been enough for Liam to fall into an abyss of uncertainness. So the shape of the girl getting closer, even though horribly slowly, made him smile like it hadn't happen in a very long time.

She was even... brighter than he remembered.

Her hair, tight in a ponytail, shone with silver reflections, while Liam was used to see their deep blackness under the grim Welsh skies. Her skin was tanner, and her eyes two pieces of coal, scorching under the sun.

“Liam!” he heard her yell as she ran toward him. She hugged him, with an excitement Liam wasn’t expecting, but that he was hoping.

“Hi, Aleta.” he told her, his voice controlled. He smiled, glad for the warm welcome.

They started walking together, in no rush.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, a question that of course Liam had been expecting, but that he wasn’t ready to answer.

“I took a plane and… here I am.” he replied, trivially. The blush arose on his cheeks, as pale as ever, and Aleta arched an eyebrow.

“I gathered as much. I doubted you had swum here.” she ironized. “I just wanted to know what brings you so far from home.”

“Stress, I reckon. I went to the airport, unsure as to where to go. And then... you came to mind, and I grabbed the first flight.” the girl’s smile tempered his discomfort and pushed him to keep talking. “After all, you saw how life is in Brecon. Not what I’d call exciting.” she nodded, as if she understood his reasons.

“I'm so glad to see you. You’re one of the few things I’ve missed about that place.” she admitted, pretending to shiver.

“I know, I know. We agree, Wales’ got all to envy to Spain, alright?” he conceded, amused. Aleta shrugged.

“That’s not what I said. It’s logic for me to love Spain. It’s my country, I’ve been living here since the day I was born. It’s a little less logic that you ran away from home, even though we’ve ascertained that Brecon might just be the least stimulating town in the whole UK.” she said, smirking.

Liam sighed. He turned to look at her, wondering for the first time if the fact that he found Brecon suffocating was the only real reason why he was there.

“I’ve got my reasons.” he muttered, suddenly shy. She shrugged again, and for a while they kept walking quietly.

Liam was on edge, but he kept telling himself that it was about being far from home, for the first time.

And that sun too, beautiful and cursed, was playing its part in it.

 

~

 

It wasn’t a prearranged destination, but their steps had led them there, a place Liam vaguely remembered to have seen in photo.

The Alcàzar stood out in front of him as a proof of an ancient and thriving time, the same as Plaza de España.

There too, the rays of sun lorded over, and Liam started to feel uncomfortable for all that light he was so little used to.

They sat on a low wall in front of the palace and Aleta started staring at Liam, grinning.

“You’re weird, do you know that?” she said all of a sudden. The boy tried his best to look dignified.

“I never said I was normal.” he replied, his voice almost pretentious. She shook her head, exasperated.

“What are you doing here?” she asked yet one more time. And, again, he didn’t answer and shrugged, letting his eyes roam toward the palace witness of an ancient and still living splendour.

He grabbed his camera, almost hesitating. He aimed it at the main entrance and took a picture, solemnly. Then he sighed.

“You know, I’ve always thought cameras are a pretty great invention. I thought they served to help memory when it fades.” he stared at the object in his hands. “But a camera can duplicate objects, places, people. Not what they feel nor what they instil. There are things that can't be printed on paper, that are entrusted to the lability of memories.” he murmured, more to himself than to her.

Aleta, on her part, smiled.

“Take a picture of me.” she asked, calm and determined. He frowned but did as she had asked, then he stared questioningly at her. The girl shook her head and nodded toward the camera.

“Do you really think that, once you’ll have printed that picture, all you’re going to see is going to be a face? That you won’t remember of this day, of who I am and what you’ve felt?” she put a hand down on his shoulder, complicit. “I think that pictures catch more than the human eye, and that when you look at them the memories are completed with new feelings. There are things one doesn’t forget, Liam.” she said, then she closed her eyes and offered her face to the sun.

Liam kept quiet for a while.

He was quite the pessimist one, he knew that.

He wondered it, somehow, it was that sun which instead made Aleta such an optimist. If under its light, when the shadow of the Welsh fog was far away, it wasn’t easier to see the beauty around him.

He looked at Aleta and smiled.

She was beautiful. Incredibly so, even more in her natural habitat than she was in Brecon, where her beauty got corrupted by how completely inadequate she was for that place.

She was beautiful, and he knew he was there for her.

Because her voice, her breathing, her skin had lured him to that magical placed, drenched in an middle eastern atmosphere making of Aleta a perfect Scheherazade.

Still, the one thousand and one night spell wasn’t in the lure of the woman speaking, but in the stories she told.

It wasn’t Aleta.

It was Sevilla, it was Plaza de España, it was the Alcàzar.

It was the sun, its light making the sky almost accessible to human comprehension.

He smiled to the girl sitting next to him, a smile finally uncorrupted, lacking the vices of his inborn craving for finding a reason for everything.

In that smile he thanked Aleta Rubio for being there, for having showed to him the much famous charm of that place, for having made him realize that the world went beyond words and common feelings, stretching toward boundaries that his imagination could only dream of crossing.

“Thanks.” he murmured, trying to put into that insignificant sound everything that was going through his mind, all his thankfulness and that new conscience he had of himself, the best gift he had ever received, that he had ever given to himself.

He leant over to kiss her cheek, lightly, without even know why.

And maybe there wasn’t a cause at all, and for once he didn’t struggle to look for it.

 

~

 

“Hey, it’s me.”

_“Hi, stranger!”_

Aleta’s voice came from afar, but it had never sounded closer to Liam.

“I’ve printed the pictures.” he told her, wasting no time in useless chit-chat.

“ _And what do you see?”_ she asked, curious. He smiled, realizing only later she couldn’t see him. A flaw he hadn't lost, even though he wondered whether Aleta couldn’t feel him smile anyway, even at so far a distance.

“You’re not a shrink and these aren't ink stains in which I have to see imaginary shapes.”

The girl laughed, and he basked in the image of her face, kissed by the sun and that genuine laughter.

 _“You know what I mean.”_ she replied, amused.

He stared at the picture in his hands.

The outline of the Alcàzar, the sun projecting its indistinct shadows on the shiny, hot marble.

The girl’s face was everywhere in that picture, as alive as it got.

“I see everything.” he murmured, ecstatic.

He truly saw everything.

And, with or without the picture, he knew he was going to remember that place and that smile forever.

There was a soul in that image, and he knew it was his own.

He smiled again, looking outside the window.

It was foggy, that day. But now he could see past the greyness, imagining the sunlight in Sevilla.

 


End file.
